More:
"Pele was a great player, but you can't me put me in the same bracket. I helped myself along the way by listening to great managers such as Brian Clough and Sir Alex Ferguson and working very hard, but I wasn't a great player.
"Players who have played at a very good level are usually subject to an unrealistic expectation level.
"If you look at the top managers who've had a long career such as Clough and Ferguson, they started at smaller clubs and been given a little bit more time. England manager Steve McClaren is another who quietly stepped up the ladder not too far from here.
"I maximised everything I had as a player and that is all I can ask from the players at Sunderland.
"I worked my socks off and I got my rewards. I will be telling the Sunderland players if they give 100 per cent they'll get their rewards.
"All you can ask from players is that they do their best. If they do that they will be OK - if they don't, there will be problems.
"That's the same in any business. I will be quick to suss that out - I have a good eye for that."
More still:
"Brian Clough took me from Irish football with Cobh Ramblers and put me straight into the Forest first team. Not many would have done that. Hopefully I have learnt a little bit from the three years I had with him. He gave me my chance and was a big inspiration.
"The path was made for me going to Forest, learning my trade, making mistakes, looking for bigger and better things and then Manchester United came along and Sir Alex Ferguson gave me another springboard.
"I would probably say because of the length of time I spent at United that Sir Alex became the biggest influence on my career -but without Brian Clough I wouldn't ever have worked with Ferguson.
"Coaches used to come to watch United train and go away disappointed saying, 'Is that it?' Ferguson believed in keeping it simple like Cloughie - and that is the way I am going to do it."
The Scotsman:
Remember the portents of doom expressed when Roy Keane arrived in Glasgow halfway through last season? Remember the chin-stroking analysis that decided that Keane would be a footballing disaster because of his supposed incapability of lowering his expectation levels to tally with the modest talents of his new teammates? Remember the predictions of uproar and unrest in the east end of the city, of dressing-room mayhem, of the supposed threat to the very spirit of the club and to Gordon Strachan's own job?
And what happened? He came, he played a bit, he left. Not a whimper was heard, not publicly at any rate. He accepted where he was, the reality of it. At his unveiling and in the odd time he was put up for interview he came across as intelligent and interesting and understanding. That surprised one or two people. Lovers of caricature were taken aback. This was not the growling Keane they had expected. This was an altogether different animal.
Keane had come to terms with the waning of his powers by the time he joined Celtic. He was in managerial mode when he came here. Wearing the hoops was a bit of unfinished business he wanted to attend to before his time as a player came to an end but it seems his months in Glasgow were as much to do with his desire to pick Strachan's brains as the filling of his midfield.
But there is no convincing some people. There is a widespread belief that Keane will fail in football management because, after operating at the elite end of the game practically his whole career, he'll find the prospect of dealing with substandard players a head-wrecker. And that temper? How is he going to react when a referee makes a bad call against his team or when a player gets uppity in the dressing-room or when a future fight against relegation (it happens to every manager at some stage) begins to fry his brain? Will he be able to accept it or will the volcano erupt and all hell will break loose?
These are the same kinds of questions that were asked when he came to this part of the world. To doubt his ability to alter his sights, though, is tantamount to calling him thick. You seriously think he expects the same quality from Sunderland's players as he did from Manchester United's? In attitude, yes. In determination and hard work, absolutely. In skill, not a chance. "I never in my life gave out to anybody for playing badly or for making a mistake," he said last week. "I used to go mad when I saw people not trying. That used to get me every time."
The last few months have brought a change in him. It was inevitable. He says that part of the reason he railed so viciously against his teammates on MUTV last year was because he'd started thinking like a manager instead of a player. He said he was wrong. "In the last year or two what's probably caused me hassle is that I was getting the coach and the manager's head on when really I shouldn't have been because when you're a player, you're a player. Instead I was looking at the big picture."